September 20, 2004

Telling Letter in the P-G

Today the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a letter from, the Chairman of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County Robert A Glancy. Mr Glancy writes that he's commenting on a recent editorial. Although there's enough of a disconnect between the P-G's editorial and Mr Glancy's letter that I wonder whether Mr Clancy understands what he reads.

Glancy starts by saying that the P-G manages:

To repeat the claims about President Bush's National Guard Service with which Dan Rather made a fool of himself last week after breathlessly going on the air to report on what appear to be not only forgeries, but not particularly good ones at that.

Yet, this is what the P-G actually wrote:

Let's talk about Vietnam for a minute and then put it out of the way once and for all, since what we really need to discuss are the very real, painful issues confronting Americans today.

First, you were in Vietnam and you were wounded there. You certainly didn't get hurt as badly as some other people did, but you were there and you were under enemy fire. George W. Bush, a pilot for the National Guard at the same time, stayed nice and safe and comfortable in Texas, Alabama and Harvard, thanks to his daddy's connections and money. Period.

Where did the P-G mention Rather's claims for which he "made a fool of himself"? Did the P-G mention the Killian memos in some other edition? Did I miss them? Or was Mr Glancy trying, just like his co-conspirators in the White House, to deflect any attention on Bush's military record by focusing instead on the Killian Memos? There are whole reams of authentic documents that prove exactly what the P-G was talking about. The RCAC's website states that

Next there's this:

[The editorial manages] To portray the war on terror which has -- at a tragic but inescapable cost -- made America safer into some sort of personal vendetta of the president, since American presidents ought to act to protect our nation only when French troops are willing to march into battle with American soldiers.

And here is what the P-G actually wrote:

The Iraq war. You voted for it when Congress approved it because you, like almost everyone else, didn't believe the president would lie to us or get the intelligence behind his case for the war wrong. You, like the rest of us, know now that that was wrong.

Where we are now is that George Bush is getting our soldiers killed -- a thousand so far -- in pursuit of a war to make himself a war president, a president whom the rest of us are supposed to support and give another term. Yet this is a war that he got us into, with unclear objectives, a war he doesn't know how to get us out of.

He is also spending way too much of the public's money -- at least $200 billion so far -- in pursuit of his war, putting money into the pockets of Halliburton and other companies that finance his political campaign. Yet you know what we need that money for -- to fund Medicare, to preserve Social Security, to repair our roads and bridges, to put enough teachers in our schools so that Mr. Bush's claim of "no child left behind" will not be just a cruel joke.

Notice again, what Glancy says the P-G says and how little of it actually resembles what the P-G really says. He says that the P-G feels that the Iraq war is a "personal vendetta" implying that it's not. But where is that in the P-G editorial? There is the point about how the war is lining the pockets of Bush's political supporters. But isn't that, in fact, true? Isn't Halliburton, for example, making millions, if not billions off this war? To think otherwise is to assert that the capitalists in Dick Cheney's old company are not interested in profit. Which is absurd - haven't they heard? War is good for business. (Go take a look - it's rule number 35)

Please note the "French troops" line. Wow, those Republicans have such wonderful comedy writers! When challenged about the Iraq war, just mention The French - that'll make everyone laugh their way out of treason!

There's more to the Glancy's letter. Same old, same old from the "Blame Clinton First" crowd. He's to blame (or didn't you know) for the Enron scandal. Give them time, I am sure they can pin the Lindburgh kidnapping on Clinton.

I find it interesting that Bob Glancy would be troubled by the P-G's "misstating the facts." Take a look here. According to the article, Glancy made a number of misstatements about a number of different things. Perhaps Mr Glancy should not throw so many stones, living as he does in a glass house.